Introducing THE PR OFFICE

To speak or not to speak - PR is a delicate subject

For a relatively young profession, PR is a massive industry. There are PR people for any industry you can think of – from celebrity PR gurus like Max Clifford, who is the governor of my ex-secondary school (and yet no one outside of our catchment area has heard of it), to PR companies that attempt to create a buzz about a new piece of technology. There’s a mouth for every type of brainwave.

One of those mouths is The PR Office, one of the UK’s top 150 PR agencies (PR Week 2009) – established in 2004, it has undergone considerable expansion since then. It covers four main sectors, “Corporate & Commercial, Lifestyle & Entertainment, Public and Voluntary”. New, dynamic, and covering a broad spectrum, they are a progressive collection of minds involved in a new way of thinking and a creative approach to PR.

I spoke to Zoe Cole, Account Manager of The PR Office, about her role and the ins and outs of the industry. After studying English Literature and Drama at Birmingham University, Zoe wound up at The PR Office after a stint of work experience there. “I’d travelled before Uni so was keen to get straight into a job – I actually started the week after I graduated.” No messing around then. “I’ve been at The PR Office nearly four years now.”

She explained further: “I’m an Account Manager but we have a pretty flat structure – everyone gets stuck into everything, so our job titles are for career progression rather than for clients’ benefit.”

Getting stuck in happens at the start of a day at The PR Office, each beginning with a rotation of the national papers and key trade publications (”anything from Third Sector to Campaign and Property Week”), circulating a review to the whole team. The day continues with breakfast. “We have a healthy breakfast culture here,” Zoe told us – “there’s the porridge posse, toast team, and cereal crew.” The familial tones and collaborative efforts are already showing, and still we aren’t even at elevenses. This is surely to aid in their success as a PR company.

The prevailing mantra at The PR Office

It’s taken a step further though, with “company-wide brainstorms on anything from new business pitches to our Work Experience programme,” she told us. Sounds like delegation on a universal scale – everyone working hard for the company, in spite of their ‘de jure’ job title. De facto, it’s all for one and one for all. In addition to this, an exciting part of the job, for Zoe, lies in “the unknown”.

“One day I can be at the offices of a global accounting firm, and the next in Mayfair, at a boutique family law firm, discussing how to effectively target private bankers,” she told me.

This team, working together, kept on their toes by a variety of tasks, is part of the success of The PR Office. Zoe told us more about this collective of employees: “Each member of our team is cherry picked from across the board and helps to make up a growing team of bright, ambitious, well-connected thinkers.”

The other part tantamount to their existence as a successful mouth in the sea of mouths that is Public Relations, is that they know how to shut theirs. “We get our clients talked about and we stop our clients being talked about,” said Zoe. “Keeping our clients out of the media and sometimes, out of the public eye altogether, is a technique that not all agencies master.”

But it’s not just about the organisation of plans and programmes that incorporate putting people into, or taking them out of, the media’s watchful eye – it’s the execution of these stratagems, the action that comes after thought, something that Zoe thinks gives them their “edge”.

The PR Office aims for “consistently excellent results”, with tailor-made strategies to suit the client. Once again adding more fuel to the collaborative fire, an open plan office means that no one member of the team is left in the dark about one account or another.

But my burning question came at the end. What makes PR creative? Zoe, speaking on behalf of The PR Office, told me that they don’t believe in ideas for the sake of ideas. They arise as a result of pragmatic approaches to their work, “identifying new ways of communicating with our clients’ audiences, without stunts or imagery”. It grows organically, and isn’t forced.

“For us,” she said, “creativity can be as much about a thought process as the end result.”

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Find out more about The PR Office,
www.theproffice.co.uk